Searching
by kathryn ashworth
Summary: What happens when Joy's son tries to track her down
1. Chapter 1

Searching

Disclaimer: Yep, still nothing of value, and still don't own anything of any TV shows

A/N: I have no idea about the adoption process so if anything is wrong I apologise

Thomas Jones stared at his computer screen, he had long since filled in the requisite information and now the cursor sat on the 'send' button, unknowingly taunting his cowardice. To distract himself he clicked on to his iTunes, none of the music that shuffled seemed to fit his mood, the 'melancholy' playlist was well, too melancholy. He told himself that he would make a 'general malaise' playlist, but not today, he had more important things to do and this was just another form of displacement activity, along with putting all his DVDs in the right cases and then organising them in alphabetical order. He reached for his packet of cigarettes, futilely hoping that it would help to calm his nerves and he was disappointed to find that the packet was empty, but on the upside it gave him an excuse to get out of his apartment and hopefully clear his mind.

This whole saga had begun nearly 10 years ago, on his 16th birthday to be precise, his parents Mark and Louise had told him over breakfast that day that they had some important news, he feared that it would be that they were divorcing as their fights had become more vociferous and frequent, but no, they told him that he was adopted. The news hit him like a cannonball to the stomach, he could tell there were some differences to his older sister but he assumed they were just because he took more after his dad than his mum.

He only told one person in the following years, his closest friend and confidante, Phil Jenkins, they had been friends since the first day of primary school, and had been close ever since despite the fact that they went to different schools and had briefly lost touch after Thomas was sent to a boarding school in Derbyshire, and only met again by chance when they discovered that they were next door neighbours in halls at university, despite the fact that they were doing very different courses, Phil was studying Sociology and Thomas computer science.

After leaving uni he moved into an apartment that was technically part of his parents house in Kensington, but was also its own separate living space. This was the perfect compromise as it was only a short tube ride from his work and meant that he didn't have to pay the sky high rent for a place of his own on his meagre wages. He enjoyed his job and especially the interest generated when he mentioned he worked for the BBC in Television Centre, but he also failed to mention that it was only as a junior researcher and the only time he saw anyone famous was if one of the newsreaders walked past his office window.

Another perk of living where he did was that he only had to contribute a small amount of his wages for food and the bills as his electricity, gas and water were all connected to the main house, it allowed him to indulge his twin passions of motorsport and technology. Just the week before he had been sent to New York to research an upcoming programme, and happily for Thomas it coincided with the launch of the iPad, thankfully had had done all the work he needed to in the first 3 days of the trip which meant he could camp outside the flagship Apple store in Times Square for 36 hours and was rewarded by being third in the queue.

Despite trying to fill the void in his life with his gadgets he longed to know who his birth mother was, and he had heard from an acquaintance at work about a website which aims to put adoptees in touch with their birth parents, and it was the send button on this particular website that was taunting him so.

Please R&R


	2. Chapter 2

Searching

Disclaimer: Yep, still nothing of value, and still don't own anything of any TV shows. I also own nothing of F1 or the BBC coverage (although I wouldn't mind in certain cases)

As usual the car was filled almost to bursting point, somehow Thomas had once again been volunteered to drive down on the Wednesday evening to set up their camping area, with not only his tent, but everyone else's and to do all the food shopping in Brackley before they arrived on the Thursday evening, he didn't even have the biggest car, but once again he had seemingly managed to bend the laws of space and time to fit four 3 man tents, a gazebo, 2 camping stoves, and the bamboo sticks and rope to mark out their spot, into a Mk2 Golf GTI, along with his own bags for the weekend and the inevitable barrage of camera equipment and chargers for other gadgets that ran off the car battery that accompanied any trip he made.

As he was making his way along the A43 in convoy with other race fans keen to get a prime spot on the site his BlackBerry beeped to let him know he had an e-mail, despite it was technically a work phone he had set it up receive personal e-mails too, well his superiors didn't know which addresses were those of contacts, and which were his personal e-mails. After erecting the rope to mark out the site he finally checked his e-mails, after deleting the usual spam, notifications from Facebook and various forums and moving his work e-mails to the appropriate folder, there was just one left, from an address he vaguely recognised. Clicking to open it he discovered it was from the adoption website, apparently they had found someone who matched the details that he knew about his mum.

The entire afternoon he was distracted by the e-mail, although he had his laptop and his mobile broadband dongle he didn't want to have his weekend overshadowed if the person who was found turned out not to be her, so he decided to wait til he got home. Despite the uncertainty hanging over his head Thomas managed to put one of the tents up for himself and his baggage, a second for the food, in record time.

Thursday was spent putting up the rest of the tents and assembling the unnecessarily complicated camping stove, inflating the paddling pool that for the duration of the weekend will be used to store and chill beer and to a lesser extent the milk for people's cups of tea. The group was completed when Ben, Katie, Hannah, Martin and Phil arrived with the flagpole, and flags to announce that the "Jenson Button Mafia" had arrived, the name given to them by Katie's dad. The rest of the evening was spent getting to know the people in the tents around them. The immediate favourites were the convoy of German fans, who spent the summer driving between all the European races, but mainly won favour by providing beer. They would cause a slight problem later in the weekend, also fuelled by beer when one of the group, Dieter got a little confused and tried to get into Ben's tent, and Christian tripping over one of the guy ropes on Katie and Martin's tent causing it to collapse much to their surprise, but not delight.

Friday morning was spent watching free practice and doing about the only sort of shopping the guys in the group liked, for more unnecessary motorsport merchandise. The afternoon was once again spent watching free practice and chatting to the women next to them who to everyone's delight were also massive Jenson fans, the older of the two, Lauren even had Jenson Button themed tattoos, his helmet design and the dates of his first F1 race win and his World Championship win, her friend, Molly was more of a Sebastian Vettel fan, in her 'Kate's Dirty Sister' top and matching hat.

Later that evening there was a commotion on just behind the group's pitch, from the excited chatter they discovered that the BBC F1 presenters Jake Humphrey and Eddie Jordan were having a barbecue to get to know the fans better, watching the coverage back after they got home Thomas was amused to discover that they kept showing the back of his tent and Phil had seemed to get himself into every shot.

On Saturday the whole group were determined to drown their sorrows after a poor qualifying performance from Jenson and the further dominance of the Red Bull team in the shape of Sebastian Vettel being in Pole Position and Mark Webber second, although there was some controversy in the form of the fact that Red Bull gave Vettel the updated wing off Webber's car. Saturday night was spent in the pub in Silverstone village, well more correctly in the village that had become the beer garden for the pub.

Sunday morning was spent discussing possible tyre strategies and reassuring each other that Jenson starting in 14th wasn't the worst thing that could happen, he had won from that position before and that at least this was a track where overtaking could happen. In the event there was lots of overtaking from Jenson even though he only finished 4th. They waited for the majority of the crowds to dissipate before making their way back over to the campsite to prepare for the evening, this chiefly consisted of putting up posters around the tents saying "This is a World Cup free zone.

We will be showing Top Gear from 8pm followed by a barbecue. Admission only with beer and/or barbecue foods. All welcome" along with refilling the paddling pool with beer and lighting the barbecues. In the event it was more of a success than anyone could have predicted, despite the large group of Spanish fans coming through the campsite at about 11.30 still honking their air horns loudly and causing virtually everyone to have uncharitable thoughts about where the horns could be stored.

All to soon the weekend was over and the tedious job of breaking camp could begin. Thankfully the traffic was lighter than usual which made the journey back to London much less stressful than it could have been. Thomas decided to investigate the mysterious e-mail he had received on Wednesday. The description on the woman's profile matched what little he knew of his mother, which consisted of the fact that she was 15 when she had him and therefore couldn't cope. Checking her location he saw that she was registered in Cleveland, Ohio. There was an option on the sight to let them know if the information was useful and if they could pass on contact details. Thousands of miles away Joy Scroggs' laptop chimed with the familiar you've got mail tone, little did she know it would change her life to such as an extent.

As usual please R&R


	3. Chapter 3

Searching

Disclaimer: Yep, still nothing of value, and still don't own anything of any TV shows.

Joy sat on the porch swing with a bottle of wine building up courage before logging on to the website that Tyler had recommended earlier in the evening, little did she know this was the same situation Thomas was in just a couple of months before. Even with the help of the wine she insisted that Mel fill in the details as she couldn't bring herself to do it.

Three days later she was once again sat on the swing with her laptop this time absent-mindedly checking the prices of flights from Cleveland to LA when the familiar "You've got mail" tone sounded. She put it to the back of her mind whilst booking her flight, as soon as the website had confirmed she had booked she went to her mailbox, expecting to have some spam offering her cheap prescription drugs, she was shocked to discover that it was from the website where she had tried to find her son, informing her that a user of the site had matched the details she had provided, and if they both consented would she like his contact details.

What seemed like weeks later for both, but was actually 3 days, both Thomas and Joy simultaneously received emails containing the other's e-mail addresses.

Neither seemed to know how to react to this, they both knew that this was the aim of trying to find the other but now it had actually happened they were both unsure of how to react. Joy unwittingly took the initiative, composing an e-mail she hoped was chatty enough to not scare him but with the gravity of the situation as an undercurrent as the website had said they only had similar details, not that they were exact matches, but she eventually decided that this particular draft was the one she was going to use.

"Hello Thomas, or do you prefer Tom? Will stick with Thomas until I know for sure. There is no easy way to say this, I think you may be the son I gave up for adoption 25 years ago. I was sent your details from a website designed to reunite adoptees with their birth parents. To begin with a little about myself to help you see if this matches what you know.

I got pregnant at the age of 15, as you may have guessed it wasn't planned and I was in no position to cope with the responsibility of parenthood, so between me, your father and our families we decided it would be for the best if we put you up for adoption. All I know of the people that took you in are that your "father" is a successful engineer in the design of military hardware and that your "mother" runs a small restaurant in Holland Park, of course none of this may be true anymore. If none of the above information rings true please disregard this message.

If you are still reading then that must ring a bell. I am currently living in Cleveland, Ohio with two of my friends from LA. I moved to America at the age of 22 with the usual pipedream of being an actress, after many failed auditions I gave up hope and enrolled on a beauty therapy course. After working for many salons I eventually set up on my own, and some of my clients came from other places and soon I became known as "The Eyebrow Queen Of Hollywood" It was here that I met Victoria Chase, star of a popular daytime soap playing Honor St Raven, we quickly became friends after discovering we had a mutual friend Melanie Moretti also known as Mel, we soon became inseperable and learned to put up with each other's quirks and insecurites and, well mainly the occasional "overenthusiastic" fan (putting it lightly) of Victoria's. about a month ago we we on a flight to Paris, when we had to make an emergency landing and well a long story short we decided to rent a house which came with a caretaker, whom I took an immediate dislike to, and well the feeling is mutual. Well enough about me, hope to speak to you soon.

Joy"

Having had both Mel and Victoria proof-read it many times she eventually plucked up the courage to press the send button.


End file.
